


Love is (Watching someone die)

by orphan_account



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, tw: major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-10
Updated: 2013-03-10
Packaged: 2017-12-04 20:54:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/714984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael held Gavin in a way that left him raw, like opened ground, again. And, given the chance, Gavin would tear himself down, to the bone, where his heart was meant to live. He would grind it, mercilessly into dust and empty it into Michael's bitter mouth. He would lock his doors and bury Michael beneath his secret shames and leave nothing but a footprint behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love is (Watching someone die)

The sky opened up on a Friday morning, unearthing itself from the dull prison that had barred itself around the empty space, only grey skies and darkening thoughts, leaving no room to imagine if they were clouds or wisps of smoke, curling into the atmosphere at startling heights, catching on fire as if floating on a spark. 

Gavin watched the vast, desolate sky with wide eyes, half masked by the familiar curl of hair and splay of arms around him, whispering nothing into his skin, but verbalising it all, nonetheless. Michael lay there with him, on the grass. Maybe he was asleep- Gavin hadn't dared asked. They'd stopped talking hours ago after the birds had begun chirping and Michael's voice had faltered with a harsh whimper and a groping of hands. 

"I'm so sorry."

But Gavin knew, Gavin felt it in his core, from the tip of his tongue down to the chip of his nails, that Michael was lying.

\--

The clouds had blocked the sun the day Michael kissed Gavin. It had been overcast and foggy and so, so unbearable. Gavin relished in those days because it reminded him of home. Michael hated them. Maybe since them the skies had been half clouded, maybe it was all in Gavin's head.

They had been arguing about the weather, late into the evening, Gavin seated on Michael's couch, Left 4 Dead on pause and the window open, breathing the cold's night air into the small apartment, when Michael had leaned over, not to shut him up, so much as to explore what it could be like.

"Michael," Gavin blinked, stars in his eyes, compensating for the lack of in the Heavens. "Michael."

Michael didn't move away, didn't flinch. His face was unreadable and Gavin wanted to trace the contours of his body with a tongue made from rough touches and desperate noises. It was Gavin who leaned forward, next, not to explore so much as to get some sort of response.

They were different, in that respect, but it didn't matter. It never had and never would.

Gavin let himself sink slowly into it, slowly into the warm arms and cocky smile that was Michael Jones. Maybe Michael would do the same.

\---

He'd never been one to aestheticise violence. Why would he? Violence was violence. It happened and, occasionally, people died. That was life. That was why he didn't understand the funerals, dressing someone up after they'd taken their final breath did make sense to him. 

"Having bad breath is better than having none at all," he'd been told at his Grandfather's funeral when he was ten. He didn't understand it, then. He barely understood it now.

He had watched his grandfather's face, pale- so pale. Almost green in complexion. _Just close the casket_ he'd wanted to cry, _Leave the bludger with some dignity_. Or, maybe he hadn't thought it at the time. Maybe it had been an unpleasant swirl of emotion. Emotion that he didn't understand. But he understood the practice well enough into his early twenties. And, had his grandfather died then, he would have yelled at them to leave him.

He understood funerals when his mother died. He understood that people it for some sick sense of closure that he could never quite grasp. They were dead. Dressing them up certainly wasn't going to bring them back and he'd screamed that to Michael at three in the morning, drunk and unhappy. Tears had been streaming down his face and he'd cursed and yelled and told Michael that he was nothing and that Gavin could never, never love him. 

His mother was dead and it wasn't fair. But Michael just held on, riding it out, trying to keep Gavin grounded. 

Gavin watched as Michael swallowed his pride, and Gavin's too. He watched as his throat clicked with anger and his thighs clenched with desire, and he watched as Michael still opened his mouth.

"I love you."

And Gavin would marvel, later, at how he'd singlehandedly managed to unspool the words from Michael's clicking throat and how, much, much later when they'd watch the sky open up, the words would become lost tabulations of a dark boy lost in shadows, howling for a mother that was no longer there. 

So Gavin rode the early morning out, clinging to Michael and sobbing into the sleeve of his suit jacket. A jacket that Gavin would later tear, ripping it off Michael just so he could _touch him_.

Gavin told Michael that he would never be like this; not in the future. Michael just held him and didn't mutter a word.

\----

Gavin got better. It took a while, but he relearned his smile and practiced his taunts and soon he'd be grown up version of himself.

Michael adapts, and changes too. He's softer, somehow. Lighter. Not like a feather in the slightest but less like the rock at the bottom of a river. They move in together and they regret it almost immediately. Gavin is messy and Michael is perpetually annoyed. It takes them a week to sort out a system, but they do and thus fall into regular, rhythmic patterns of love, alcohol and, sporadically, fights. Gavin still hadn't whispered the three words into Michael's mouth yet, but he's sure Michael's aware by now. There's no way he couldn't be. There's no way Gavin's subtle enough. 

"Clean your goddamn plate," Michael moaned, after dinner one night.

Gavin had smiled, a large obnoxious thing. "I'll clean you," he warned. "With my _dick_."

\----

The doctor is straightforward when Gavin goes. He doesn't dance around the subject, doesn't tell Gavin that it will be alright, that he can make it through this. He doesn't smile and he doesn't laugh when Gavin tries to lighten the mood, despite his own heavy head.

"You've developed AIDS, Mr Free."

He had blinked, not knowing what to say. He'd gone home and stared at himself in the mirror for an hour, forcing a smile when Michael came home.

He'd gone to bed, and he'd never been quite the same.

\--

When he was twelve, his mother had explained to him that when she'd been a teenager she'd made some stupid decisions. She'd told him that she'd used needles and shared them around. She'd been reckless and young and invariably, stupid. 

"The needles that I used weren't clean," she'd explained. "So, I paid for my mistakes."

"What happened?" he'd asked, looking from his mother's sad face to his father's grim one. "Why're you telling me now?" He'd just wanted to go outside and play with the other kids. He wanted to leave them and he'd wanted to get away.

"I developed a disease called 'HIV', and, unfortunately, when I fell pregnant with you.." she trailed off, biting her lip. "I wasn't careful about that, either."

"Neither of us were," his father interjected, holding her hand. "It's not your fault."

"I'm sorry," Gavin clarified. "What did I do?" He could hardly be blamed for something he did when he was a newborn, right?

"I passed it onto you," she spoke, voice unsteady. "I'm so, so sorry, sweetheart."

\--

He only understood what it meant to have HIV when he was fifteen or sixteen and had to sit through various health classes explaining how to prevent 'catching' it. His friends laughed and called anyone who had it a 'gay fag', so that Gavin learned to hide both his disease as well as his developing sexual identity. He didn't tell a soul and refused to talk about it outside his family. 

His sexual exploits were careful and precise, usually with others who were already infected or with those that didn't care (ignoring how far and few between those particular encounters were). 

He'd just told Michael he had an STD, and he'd let it go with minimal pestering. They were careful, and both went for regular check-ups, mostly because Gavin enforced it and partly because Michael was pedantic about that crap.

Michael didn't know. It was a constant source of anxiety for Gavin, waking up in the middle of a fevered dream, checking to see if Michael was still there and not angry. 

He was always there.

Gavin had never felt so guilty, alone and trapped.

\-----

Michael had started talking about how he wanted to adopt a kid. Gavin was reserved about it (how could he raise a child when he would only live for another five or six years at best?) and they got into more than one fight regarding Gavin's lack of interest in _anything_ , lately. Michael had assumed that this was Gavin's way of ending the relationship, or attempting to. They fought more and more regularly about everything. About the potential adoption, about work, about the set up of their apartment, political things, religious things. Everything. Gavin just wanted to sleep, just wanted to turn it off. He wanted to climb into Michael's arms and beg forgiveness but at the same stage wanted to travel words away. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to do this alone. 

Everyone harps on about how they'd loathe to die alone. Gavin had thought, his whole life, that that was how he'd wanted to go. 

"We're all equal in death," his father had told him, at his mother's grave, a year earlier. "We buy things our whole life, we fall in love, we try to change the world. But in the end we all die. That's it. That's all there is to it."

He had called his father up, after receiving the news from the doctor. His father was the only one he could talk to, unhelpful as it was.

"The life expectancy of anyone, ever is zero," His father muttered after a few long minutes of silence. "You're not alone, Gav. Everyone dies some day. You just got unlucky. I'm sorry."

Gavin didn't say a thing.

"I love you."

\---

One summer, Michael and Gavin had jumped on a plane and vacationed in California for a few weeks. They'd spent hours in the sun, and when they'd stumbled back to the hotel room, Michael kissed every inch of Gavin's sunbleached skin. 

"I love you, Gavin," he panted between moans. Between desperate touches and thrusts. "I love you, I love you. I love you."

He came with Michael's name on his lips, hips bucking up and fists groping the sheets. "I need you," he whimpered, and watched Michael come.

\-----

Gavin came back from work with Michael months after receiving the news, tired and unhappy. The limited medication he did take was taking its toll on his body, rendering him almost useless at home and at work. He was sensitive to the medication (which he already knew from when he was a teenager and refused to take it after several migraines and severe nausea) and took less than the prescribed dose, but it was still too much for him. 

He hid the meds from Michael's reach, another constant source of anxiety along with his failing relationship, his sluggish behaviour and the constant depression that had set in after realising that he couldn't avoid his sickness any longer. Doing so in the past had nearly killed him, and, in less than two years, it definitely would. 

They didn't make love any more. They didn't even have sex. Michael would sleep on the far end of the bed and Gavin on the other. Aside from the regular arguments, they didn't talk any more. Michael had started going out every night, Gavin assumed he was cheating with someone younger, more energetic and a little less broken. He couldn't even find it in himself to resent Michael for that. Why would he? 

They had been sitting down on the couch, watching some reality game show when Michael had come out and said it. Much like the doctor, he hadn't danced around it, hadn't put sweet words in place of, or dressed up in pretty little lies. 

"I think you need to move out." The thing was, the thing that Gavin took from that, hours later, checking into a hotel room for the night, was that Michael hadn't even turned to look at him. It was as if Michael was so disgusted by what Gavin had become, he couldn't even turn to look him in the eye any more. "I tried to make this work and it just isn't. There's no point."

Gavin nodded, envisioning Michael with a bride who would live to at least one hundred, who would have kids with him and only get sick in her late eighties. Gavin wasn't selfless by any means, but one of the things he had learned when his mother died, was that his father would have been better off not knowing her. He knew that; he'd watched his father fall into the dark, lonely pit of despair. He'd watched him try to clamber up and out of it and fail every single time. 

"I'll start packing my stuff, then." He got up, crossing to the kitchen to grab and empty box and then to the bedroom where he could first take his bottle of pills and store them away out of sight, and then a few different shirts and jeans, socks and undershirts. He took his toothbrush and took his iPod off the charge. 

"I'll be back tomorrow for the rest of my crap," he murmured, feeling so empty when Michael didn't turn away from the TV. "You don't have to pack up anything and you don't have to be here tomorrow when I come."

"Don't worry," Michael said, watching the lady on the scream wail as she lost all her money. "I won't."

\--

Before Gavin had come to the US to stay for one of the longest times, his mum and dad had told him what it was like to meet your soul mate. Gavin gagged and rolled his eyes at the idea, but smiled with good nature and waited for them to start.

"When I met your mum," his dad started, grin on his face matching his mother's. "It was- I can hardly describe it. It was like birds chirping and angels' harping. It was amazing. I knew she was the one."

"Gross."

They laughed, and Gavin joined in, only at the end. 

"He only heard birds chirping because he was on E at the time," she muttered in a stage whisper to Gavin. 

"Oi!"

"Oh, you know it's true," Gavin's mother rolled her eyes now. "But it was special. I didn't believe in love at first sight, and I still don't to a large extent. But.."

Gavin waited.

"I knew that your dad was The One. I know that I love him now, and maybe it won't be forever, but what we've had in the past twenty four years has been enough."

"Why's it important that you tell me this, now?"

"You never know who you'll meet in America," his father said sagely. "It's important that if and when you find Them, you know."

Gavin nodded, even though he thought his chances of finding somebody in the US were very slim and that he'd much rather settle down with a nice girl from London. "I'll be on the lookout."

\----

When Gavin met Michael, there were no birds or harps. There was a lot of swearing though, and Michael just raised a quizzical eyebrow when Gavin introduced himself. 

"Good Lord," he said. "You're British."

Gavin nodded and gave a thumbs up, used to that kind of comment by now. Unfortunately, in doing do, his arm knocked over a bottle of water perched over Michael's keyboard, pouring into the keys.

"Er," Gavin said, staring at the now empty bottle. "Sorry?"

"You're British and you're a fucking idiot," Michael growled, startling Gavin with his anger. "Fucking figures."

"Maybe you shouldn't have had the water so close to you damn keyboard," Gavin fired back, kind of annoyed to be treated with such contempt on his first day. 

"Maybe you shouldn't have FUCKING TIPPED IT OVER!"

"Maybe-"

Geoff took that moment to walk in, lazy smirk on his face. "I knew hiring you was a good idea, Gavin."

And thus, the legacy of Michael and Gavin begun.

Gavin didn't hear birds or chirps, but as Michael sat, cleaning his keyboard, he knew.

\----

"You must be Gavin," said Michael's mother, who Michael resembled so much, it was frightening. Though, her accent was thicker and her hair was straightened. She was short with freckles, though. That alone was enough to win Gavin over. "I've heard so much about you."

"All good things, I hope?" Gavin smiled, trying to keep his manners impeccable. "Michael's talked about you, too."

She gave Michael a smile. "Wonderful things. And I don't believe my boy would ever talk about me to his boyfriend, considering that he never calls."

"Mom," he moaned, biting his bottom lip. "Can we not do this now?"

"I wouldn't want to embarrass you in front of Gavin," she said, snippily. Gavin loved her already. She waltzed out of the front room and into the kitchen, where, presumably, Michael was meant to chase after her.

"I really like your mum."

"My mom really likes my mom too." He sounded sad, but the grin on his face betrayed him. Gavin snaked a hand around his waist and kissed him on the cheek. 

"Like mother, like son."

 

\---

 

When Michael broke it off, Gavin spent a night in the bar they used to frequent, as friends, as lovers, as boyfriends. 

He saw Michael, at the front of the bar, chatting up a pretty, petite brunette. His smile curled around his teeth in a way that should have been menacing, but on Michael, just made him look kind of fit. Michael took her hand and kissed it, and she got all flustered. Gavin left. He was a masochist but he wasn't insane.

\--

He'd quit working at Rooster Teeth early in the Spring, when the buds of darling May would ferment and spawn, the sky darkening with rain that would serve for growth. 

"We all need the bad to appreciate the good," Burnie had murmured to him, years and years ago after his first marriage with Jordan was a failure. "It's a stepping stone and I'll make it."

Gavin didn't understand. "But you loved her. How can you just move on from that?" He couldn't possibly imagine not being with Michael then. He couldn't imagine a future without him by Gavin's ear, yelling obscenities as often as he'd whisper sweet nothings.

"I expected that our marriage would be enough to sustain itself," Burnie said, sounding so desperately heart-broken and optimistic all at once. "I didn't try. Neither did she. You can't keep going on something that's not there."

"That didn't answer my question."

Burnie sighed, looking older. "It's not easy, but I know it's what I have to do. We didn't love each other towards the end and staying together for the kids wouldn't have worked."

So he'd said good luck, and disappeared. So, when Gavin quit, Burnie just gave him a one-armed hug and muttered the same 'Good luck' to him. 

Gavin promised to keep in touch. He'd break it.

\--

Gavin stopped eating and lost a considerable amount of weight. Doctors would say it was the anxiety, the depression. Gavin said it was the medication, which he'd stopped taking altogether.

He forgot his father's name and had trouble remembering his own. 

"Just take the medication, Gav," a man who he didn't recognise, while he lay in the hospital bed, urged him. "Please, you can get through this. You can live through this."

But he didn't want to get through this- he didn't understand anything; didn't understand the pallid grey faces with aching, stretched features. He didn't understand the tears shed for him from different men and women. He couldn't name them, couldn't identify them. 

"No," he murmured as the light from behind his eyes darkened and the pale weightless of words deserted him for the airplanes or skyscrapers of bigger and better worlds. 

He thought to the men and women who had been waiting their whole life for a last meal only to realise that it tasted like falling apart. He thought that there wasn't a moment in history when he weren't so honest as to recognise that he wasn't going to come back, his last confessions, last breaths were more like a firing squad than a chance for relief. He'd been waiting his whole life for a burst of honestly through his ear drums, like the sound of his favourite song. 

He thought it would sound like the voice of a man he'd once loved.

But once they'd been together for so many years, the love started to fade and the music pattered away like empty raindrops on his back after running away from home for the first time. But, in his last moments, his last seconds, Michael will be the story that Gavin tells himself, until his spine is naught but dust, until his hands fall to pulp.

"I love you," he'll gasp, because the truth is too little, too late, and the edge of his touch will sting hot white and Gavin will be lost to the world forever with Michael's name on his lips.

\---

Gavin had disappeared from the world for exactly six weeks, spending the precious little he had left with his father, but regret will bring him back to Austin and self loathing will bring him back to Michael's doorstep.

Michael would open the door, scowl and ask what the Hell Gavin was doing there after disappearing off the face of the Earth. Michael had been worried, who did Gavin think he was, throwing a hissy fit like that? Michael just wanted space, he didn't want to lose Gavin completely.

"I have AIDS," he said, voice smooth and practiced, eyes shining over like the rock at the bottom of a river. "I'm going to die."

Michael stares, and Gavin thought that they must look like people they never were and Gavin wonders if Michael regretted him late and night and too-early in the morning. Gavin wonders, as Michael pushes his way into Gavin's mouth, if Michael could ever stop loving him at all. 

Michael takes them inside and grinds their sick old shames to dust, crying only when he thinks Gavin to be asleep.

"I kept calling and I should have told you, Gav. You're the truth I kept missing and everything I begged for, too little too late."

\---

On their first weekend out as an official couple, Michael brought Gavin flowers. 

On their first weekend out, Gavin brought Michael home.

On their first weekend out, Michael stripped the clothes and touched the heaving province of Gavin's chest, arching the firm line of his own back. The rain slipped and flooded, leaving them both open and free and slowly, in love.

\----

The sky opened up on a Friday morning, unearthing itself from the dull prison that had barred itself around the empty space, leaving no room to imagine if they were clouds or wisps of smoke, curling into the atmosphere at startling heights, catching on fire as if floating on a spark. 

Michael held Gavin in a way that left him raw, like opened ground, again. And, given the chance, Gavin would tear himself down, to the bone, where his heart was meant to live. He would grind it, mercilessly into dust and empty it into Michael's bitter mouth. He would lock his doors and bury Michael beneath his secret shames and leave nothing but a footprint behind.

Gavin had been told for years that there was nothing to life but life, nothing mattered because, in the end, everyone died anyway. 

But in touching Michael, in loving him, with such vicious intent and anguished longing, he knew that it couldn't be true.

And maybe he'd only wanted to leave a footprint behind, but he'd spent too many hours alone with Michael photocopying paper, leaving fingerprints of ink tracked over his body, nowhere on purpose and everywhere on accident. Maybe his life tasted like disaster cocked on the edge of a loaded gun, but that was okay.

He lay there with Michael, knowing that he was loved and in love. He sat there with Michael unafraid for the first time in his life. He sat with Michael in the knowledge that this was his life and, numbered as his days may be, they were his days to live.

"I'm so sorry."

And Gavin didn't believe him.

If he was sorry he would have left years ago, back before he'd closed his eyes and oiled the hinges on his heart. Back before he breathed in the bruised kisses on the inside of Gavin's thigh and he pressed himself into Gavin, opened eyes, brilliant and shining.

If he was sorry, he wouldn't stay.

"I love you," Gavin sighed into his lips, the first time,

The calm before the hurricane,

the eye before the storm.


End file.
